The Bee

 

            Before telling about crossing the Big River, I will report that the unwelcome exposure to insects in the Ozarks was in fact the second event of its type on the trip.

            There are things you learn about each other on a journey such as the one we took. Not necessarily new things, but character quirks that are brought into more visible relief over long hours in X cubic feet of necessary confinement. We all know this when we weigh whether or not to take such a trip with a companion no matter how good a friend he or she may be.

            Cherie and I have enjoyed a long and happy marriage - two kids, two careers, two home remodels, wallpapering.  But now, in early retirement and in each other's company more often, perhaps feelings that hibernate below the surface would percolate to the top through mile after mile of silence on this the longest road trip we'd undertaken.  We travel well together as a rule, but over the years we've also enjoyed solitary time.  Made a point of it, in fact. Put simply, we're independent people who love each other. We make joint decisions; unless we don't.  My lovely wife's patience is legendary; I work at it.  Driving directions, map queries, restaurant and motel choices, potty stops might be fertile ground for disagreement.  Nothing as routine as that happened, but there were some surprises.

 

            I knew Cherie hated bugs - from the most harmless of moths and gangly crane flies to the B-52 houseflies that thrive in the Pacific Northwest. Don't even start about spiders. If an arachnid had been the subject of this brief episode, I likely would not be here to write about it.  Her tolerance for flying, buzzing critters is close to nonexistent. She comes by her aversion honestly: she grew up on the East Coast where some insects are the size of small birds - cockroaches in particular. Ugly, huge, Carboniferous Era, corner-lurking, night-crawling omnivores that roam in the dark, snacking on smudges of left-over pizza stuck to the box. The overhead light flashes on and the miscreants scatter, skittering into nooks and crannies too small for you to get at and sent it to the lower reaches of Hell.

            Clearly, I'm not fond of the little beasties either. And there's undoubtedly an important place for cockroaches in the ecosystem.  Maybe there's a Save The Roaches Society somewhere - t-shirts, monthly meetings, marches on Black Flag headquarters. The Franz Kafka Chapter in lower Manhattan, say.

            But, I digress.

 

            These vermin, are not the subject of this narrative.  Rather, members of the wonderful entomological order hymenoptera, consisting of bees, wasps, yellow jackets, and hornets. These industrious denizens of spring, summer, and fall perform wonders. Colonies live in beautifully constructed villages with intricate passages.  They protect and pay homage to a monarch, provide childcare, guards and workers, and roam far and wide to find food, yet make their way home. They band together and defend against enemies.  Bees even provide us food, however grudgingly.

            But they sting. Or bite.

            Like the one that flew in the driver's-side window, Cherie at the wheel, narrowly missing her head before disappearing somewhere in the car.  There aren't a lot of options when this happens in a vehicle traveling seventy-five miles an hour.  Skilled driver that she is - and screaming like she'd been shot - Cherie came as close as she's likely to come to a NASCAR sideways slide and pulled into a fortuitously wide driveway and jammed the brake.

            Where was the bee? Or wasp. Whatever.

            "It flew down there," she shrieked, pointing down beside her left leg, where, probably dazed by its collision with the window post, it was coming to its senses and assessing the wide cuff opening of Cherie's slacks.  Out the door she flew as fast as her tormentor had flown in.

            "So do something," she yelled from a good fifteen feet away.

            I got out of the car, stretched, and walked around the front. It was a bright sunny Utah afternoon, brown desert scrub to one side, distant green foothills in the other.  At the end of the curving driveway sat a small pair of buildings surrounded by a chain-link fence.  Then I noticed the sign. Terrific! The Carbon County Humane Society! I would commit brutal insecticide of one of God's elegant creations, whose only mistake it was to fly at an inopportune moment through airspace it had far more right to than we did, in full view of a humane society.

            Maybe I wouldn't find him. Maybe he, or it, had expired. Maybe . . . nope, there it was, crawling its sextipedal way over the door jam. From whence it harmlessly flew away without so much as a fare-thee-well.

            Am I overstating the drama? Grizzlies in Yellowstone?  I'll let the reader ask Cherie who shakily resumed her place behind the wheel and drove on, mumbling, while I resumed my place in the reclined passenger seat and fell back asleep.

            At this point, fairness compels me to add, speaking of character tics (not ticks!) that become more noticeable on such a long drive, I snore.  "Vigorously," it must be said.  Cherie didn't say a word about that over thousands of miles.